Morath vows to end special ed cap, boost support to families

Survey finds 22 percent of teachers told not to refer students to special ed

Ashley Rodriguez, 9, plays with her toys in her parents bedroom after dinner, Monday, Dec. 5, 2016, in Pflugerville. Rodriguez is a fifth grader who recently got placed in special education after years of struggles by her parents to get her services. The school refused to provide special education. Rodriguez's parents were told that immigrants could not get special ed and that they couldn't fight it.

Ashley Rodriguez, 9, plays with her toys in her parents bedroom...

AUSTIN - Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath pledged Friday to improve support for disabled students and their families as the state's largest teachers union reported that one in five members surveyed said they had been told not to refer students for special education.

Morath, speaking at a briefing with reporters after a series of heated federal "listening sessions" on special education across the state, said that he was "personally, deeply committing to improving the kinds of supports that we offer to our neediest kids."

Morath also reiterated a prior pledge to end a Texas Education Agency policy that has set 8.5 percent as the ideal rate of students who should be in special education services. The benchmark should be permanently eliminated by the spring, he said.

The survey, released by the American Federation of Teachers' Texas affiliate, found that 22.5 percent of respondents said they had "been advised by a colleague or supervisor not to refer students for Special Education services." In all, 58.5 percent said under-identification of special needs children was a problem in their school district.

The survey of 822 people was limited by the fact that it was conducted openly online and was not fact-checked. But officials and educators said it still provides powerful confirmation for families who have been pleading for special education services.

Texas AFT represents 65,000 school employees in the state, including a significant number of teachers in the Houston Independent School District. It has numerous local charters in Houston area school districts, including Spring Branch, Northeast Houston, Cy-Fair, Alief and Aldine.

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"The findings should add impetus to changes in policy at local and state level to provide adequate funding and adequate services," said Louis Malfaro, the president of Texas AFT.

Morath's comments, the AFT survey and the listening sessions held by officials from the U.S. Department of Education in Houston, Dallas, Edinburg, El Paso and Austin earlier in the week all came in response to a Houston Chronicle investigation that found that the benchmark has led schools to keep tens of thousands of children with virtually every type of disability out of critical services such as tutoring, counseling and speech therapy.

The 8.5 percent standard was not backed by any research and was implemented without any meaningful public input, the Chronicle found. In the years since its adoption, the rate of Texas students receiving special education has dropped from near the longtime national average of 13 percent to exactly 8.5 percent. That is the lowest of any state, by a long shot.

In response to the investigation, the U.S. Department of Education ordered the Texas Agency Education to end the enrollment target and came to Texas for the highly unusual public meetings, which drew more than 500 parents, educators and advocates. Many parents, emotional and angry, told of how hard it had been to obtain special education services for their children.

One parent, Christopher Dennis, the father of two special needs children who also happens to be the district attorney of Hockley County, described in Austin on Thursday night how hard it had been to obtain services for his kids and called special education in Texas "a culture of avoidance - and what it avoids is the truth."

He recommended appointment of an independent counsel and the immediate preservation of all documents on file at the Texas Education Agency. "The numbers themselves show a per se denial of civil rights to Texas children," he said.

At the same hearing, Jim Walsh, the most influential lawyer representing school districts in the state, spoke in support of the TEA, saying the agency had sought public comment on the 8.5 percent benchmark as required by law. "There is no evil plot at work here." he said.

Although the TEA has agreed to suspend and ultimately eliminate the target, the agency has said it was not an enrollment cap and that there is no evidence that any disabled child has been denied services.

More than 150 Texas educators have told the Chronicle in interviews that they interpreted the target as a cap and have seen kids turned away from needed services.

Other findings

The AFT Texas survey is sure to provide support to parents, educators and advocates who have become increasingly angry about the lack of services for children with disabilities.

Among other findings, the survey found that 22 percent of AFT members responding do not think parents are provided adequate information about special education and 18 percent do not feel able to speak freely in meetings regarding special ed admission, review and dismissal.

More than 55 percent of respondents said that when children with disabilities are denied special education, it impacts their "ability to provide instruction to all children in the general education classroom," the survey found.

"In many instances I have been told that our numbers are too high, that we should be dismissing students from special education," one teacher wrote on the survey. "Administrators are evaluated on whether they are meeting the targeted numbers."

"I have been told on more than one occasion that our SPED numbers can't go over 8.5%," an administrator wrote.

"We were told by (TEA) representatives that we MUST reduce our number of special education students," another teacher wrote, adding that, "Students were dumped out of special education as soon as their re-evaluations came due. We were told that our numbers could only be a certain percentage of the campus and district."

In his comments on Friday, Morath offered no defense of the benchmark. When asked about the state's position that the target was not an enrollment cap, Morath said: "I can't speak extensively for past practice."